Web App Prototypes with Google App Engine
This document discusses using Google App Engine and its Python SDK for quickly prototyping web applications. Some key points covered include: - App Engine allows developers to build and host web apps and supports Python runtimes. It offers scalable hosting and APIs for common tasks like user auth and data storage. - The Python SDK makes it easy to quickly create prototypes by providing a local development server, a scalable datastore, and APIs that handle common tasks so developers can focus on unique features. - Examples of prototyping tasks demonstrated include adding entities to the datastore, building basic views and filters, and testing the prototype. Frameworks like webapp2 and appengine-rest-server can further accelerate the prototyping process
Web App Prototypes with Google App Engine
- 1. Web app prototypes with the App Engine Python SDK Vlad Filippov - PyCon Canada 2012
- 3. The Goals ● Build unique applications and features ● Quickly create experiences ● Well-defined and structured data store ● Epic test coverage The Problem ● Development time ● Repetitive tasks ● User experience, interface and interaction ● Setting up datastores, local development ● Developer teams, different projects
- 4. Prototype an application - gather.at example From https://gather.at ● Adding Entities ● Layout Views ● Filters ● Refresh UI ● ...
- 5. What is App Engine? How can it help?
- 6. Google App Engine and the Python SDK ● Ability to build and host web applications ● Preview in 2008, out of preview 2011 ○ latest release v. 1.7.3 - October 23, 2012 ● Supports Python (2.5, 2.7) ● Usage: ○ Pay for instance hours, bandwidth, storage, etc ○ Free quotas (usage limits per day) ● Over 20 built-in APIs ○ Channel (Sockets), Blobstore, Memcache .... ● Datastore ○ App Engine Datastore - NoSQL schema-less object store ○ Google Cloud SQL - relational SQL DB ○ Google Cloud Storage - storage for large objects
- 7. Prototyping with App Engine ● Try out application ideas ● Prepare for large projects ● Benefits of App Engine: ○ Datastore ○ Deployment - local test server & deployment server ○ User API - use Google Accounts as login ○ Saves time during setup and development ● Testing - get a head start! ● Give more time and realistic scenarios for UX
- 13. Things that will help you ● webapp2 ○ routing, controllers, templating ( jinja2 support ) ● appengine-rest-server ● Google Cloud Endpoints ● Import bulk data (CSV, based on your models) ● Use Google Accounts / OAuth2 ● Task Queues (background tasks) ● Appstats ● Development server ○ simulates App Engine ○ development console
- 14. appengine-rest-server ● Exposes your data model via a REST API ● Supports: ○ JSON (JSONP) & XML ○ individual properties /entity/<key>/property ) ○ basic filtering ○ limits results ○ metadata browsing ( /metadata/entity/ ) ● Open source! ● Great starting point
- 18. Cloud Endpoints ● Allows you to build REST and RPC APIs ● Same infrastructure as Google APIs ○ Translate, Places, goo.gl and other APIs ● Supports OAuth2 ● Includes an API explorer ● * Ability to generate client libraries ○ JavaScript, iOS & Android ● * Tester only preview at the moment
- 20. Cloud Endpoints - Define an API Server Define API Handlers / URLs (app.yaml)
- 24. Prototype - Sample Data
- 25. To conclude... ● Invest time into unique features ● Choose a workflow, optimize it ● Record the time you spend on repetitive tasks ● Reuse as much as possible in future projects ● App Engine ○ Easy to setup, great for exploring ideas! ○ Write API & UI tests, re-use ○ Basic data models, populate sample data ○ Gives the front-end team more time ○ * Helps you get into web apps & services